Artist Lecture: Eric Adjetey Anang

Image source: www.ghanacoffin.com

Going into this talk, I was interested to find out what exactly this person did. I had heard that he was a “fantasy coffin maker”, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure as to what that meant. Regardless, I wanted to find out more.

Eric started his presentation with a video that someone made about his work. I thought this was a good way to hook the audience into the talk because generally people are more interested in watching videos rather than listening to a talk. He continued with the rest of his presentation with a slideshow of his work, organized chronologically. His first slideshows showed us the history of his business to help us understand how he got into the business that he’s in today.

I enjoyed the fact that he told the audience the difference between coffins that he makes for people in Ghana and the fantasy coffins that he made usually for people outside of his home country. He explained that “fantasy coffins” are ones that are in the shape of beer bottles, soda cans, and candy bars-- ones that are intended to be “fun”, not to be shown in a burial ceremony. But Eric primarily builds coffins that symbolize a great aspect of the deceased’s life: a chicken with chicks representing a mother with many children, a fish representing a person’s influence in the market, a hammer representing a carpenter, etc. These non-traditional shapes would not fall under the idea of fantasy because they are meaningful to the family of the deceased and are symbolic to that person’s life.

I also connected with the latter end of the slideshow because he told us that he really tries to make his way into school systems so that children would be able to expand their career options by seeing what he does for a living. Being in the art education program here at UNH, it was nice to hear what someone outside of this country thought about educating children in the arts.

At the end of the talk, I wanted to see all of his coffins in person especially since the art he makes is life-size (obviously). It’s crazier to think that he doesn’t plan out his work the way most woodworkers do around here. Rather, he just eyeballs and works on the vision inside his head.